


There are things to be appreciated

by ComplicatedLight



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: M/M, The weather ships them!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 12:52:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11081979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/pseuds/ComplicatedLight
Summary: A blazing June day brings about some new possibilities . . .





	There are things to be appreciated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [divingforstones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/gifts).



> A wee present for the lovely divingforstones :-)
> 
> This fic is set in a somewhat imagined version of Port Meadow - those of you familiar with Oxford and its environs - please forgive any inaccuracies - I'm aiming for poetic truth, not geographic truth!
> 
> The fic is set somewhere around Series 3 or 4.

The city is a shimmering, golden thing and Port Meadow is hazy with heat and dust. Everything that has to move, moves slowly—every bird and insect and mud-spattered cow is sun-drugged and drowsy. Lewis knows how they feel.

He’d been led to believe that a don they need to talk to might be picnicking with her lover, at a bend in the river deep in the meadow—but evidently he’s been misled. He and Hathaway have spent over an hour wandering through the reeds, doing their best not to disturb the dozing swans and ducks, but no lovers have they found.

So they’ve given up and have started the long walk back to the car, suit jackets flung over their shoulders and sleeves rolled up, hands trailing through the long weeds at the edge of the path. They reach an old oak which is casting a deep, dense shadow; the grass beneath it is as fresh and green and inviting as a shaded pool.

Lewis glances at Hathaway—at the patches of pink on his nose and cheeks, at the patch of sweat on the back of his shirt. “Come on. Let’s get out of the sun for a bit. We’re not going to get anything else done today so we might as well take a breather.” 

He steers them deep into the shade of the tree and sits down. The grass is so soft and cool it’s impossible not to keep running his hands through it, washing the blades of grass back and forth over his skin. Hathaway flops down next to him and there’s a grunt of pleasure as he stretches out on his back and gets himself comfortable. He closes his eyes and Lewis watches as the heat and strain and frustrations of the day fall away from him. 

“You’ll get grass stains on your shirt, James.”

“If I do, it’ll be completely worth it. This is delicious—one of your better ideas, sir.”

“Unlike the wild goose chase this afternoon, you mean?”

“More of a wild duck chase in the end.”

“It was the swans I was worried about. Bloody vicious things, they are. I saw one try to take a lad’s arm off once, when I was a kid. He got a bit too close and the bloody thing went for him.”

Hathaway snorts.

“I’m not kidding! He needed stitches.”

For a couple of minutes, they silently contemplate the dangers posed by waterfowl.

“You should try it, sir.” 

“What? Annoying swans or ripping kids' arms off? Can’t say I’m keen on either.”

“I meant you should lie down for a while. It’s like lying back in cool water. Makes me feel rather Ophelia-ish.”

Lewis frowns. “Didn’t she die?” 

“Well, we all do in the end.”

“For Heaven’s sake, James. It’s too nice a day for all that.”

“So we should save contemplating our own mortality for more overcast days? Fog, perhaps?”

Lewis rolls his eyes. “I’m not sure I want to contemplate my mortality at all, thank you very much.”

Hathaway frowns slightly. "Acknowledging that our time here is finite, there’s a view that it can make us appreciate life more, isn't there?”

“Do’ya think that’s true?”

Hathaway shrugs. “I think it is for some people, at least some of the time. There are worse ways of looking at it all, surely?”

Lewis looks out across the meadow. It's glowing, breathtakingly beautiful, in the late afternoon sun. He looks back down at his sergeant. There are things to be appreciated in life, for sure. He lies down, alongside Hathaway. The grass is soft and cushiony and as Hathaway said, with his eyes closed he can almost imagine that he’s lying in some cool, still pool, cushioned by soft pond weed beneath him. 

They lie in silence for a while, floating side-by-side. Lewis can feel himself starting to drift; not quite asleep but neither fully anchored in wakefulness. He opens his eyes to look up at the oak, and a bee chooses that exact moment to appear, slow and heavy with pollen and impossibly airborne, just a few inches above his face. He gently eases it away, and as he drops his hand back down, his arm comes to rest against Hathaway’s.

Maybe it’s the sleepiness. Maybe he’s been drugged by the sun and the stillness of the meadow, where nothing much is moving unless it has to. Whatever it is, he doesn’t shift his arm away. He gazes up at the tree, which is ancient, miraculous—a hibernating giant, breathing out the very oxygen Lewis is breathing in. There are things to be appreciated.

After a while, Hathaway’s knuckles brush against his. Lewis doesn’t move away. In fact, with a kind of out of body awareness, he watches himself push a couple of his fingers between Hathaway’s, so that they’re sort of holding hands, in a slightly awkward way. He breathes with the tree. One slow breath. Two slow breaths. Hathaway lightly squeezes his fingers. 

There are things to be appreciated. 

There are new things to be appreciated.


End file.
